| More Projects: |
| Topic | Elementary | Middle School | Senior High School |
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What is art? This question must be asked first to open the minds to the possibilites that exist. Tradition says visual art must be an object. This is no longer the case. Visual and interdiciplinary art forms include myriad activities. |
Ask kids to define what are included in works of art? Put items on the table and ask which are works of art and why? Which could maybe be works of art? Which are definitely not works of art? Why? (project from Dr.Patricia Amburgy's visual culture class for art teachers in training at Penn State) |
What are historical artifacts of their culture and time? Do same projects for both elementary and High School in this catagory. Have students bring in objects that might be art from home. Can adds, Cartoons, movies and pop culture items be of artistic value along with the paintings and sculptures of the Great Masters of Western European Art History? Discuss also in High School."Some of the best and brightest minds of art schools go into careers creating these items."Jhally |
Look again at historical works of art from above. Ghent Altarpiece, Michaelangelo, Sistine Chapel ceiling Drapers Guild Sculpture by Brunelleschi Which were made as art? When did they start being considered works of art and by whom? |
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Identity is how we see ourselves. The images we form in our minds and present to the world through our actions and appearances. Wished for identity and actual self image may be quite different and conflicted. Information around us influences our formation of identity. |
Discussion of where do guys learn to be tough. Look at imges of tough guys that kids have exposure to.. MTV, Mean kids in cartoons, Guys with guns in video games, Gi Joe toys, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings Movies like Grease. Is it more by media or Peer Pressure. What images do you want to look like and act like? What movie characters do you identify with? Do you want to be tough? Why? Could look at Grease, Fonz, West Side Story. |
Do the same kind of discussion with middle school. Include and expand discussion to talk about Eminem, Music videos and how much you listen to words or identify with them. Print out some of the words of Eminem's latest hits or ask kids to bring in the lyrics of their favorite songs. Do they realize what they are listening to? Do they agree or disagree with what the artist says?
Have students create lists of what makes them happy and what they want. Put answers to questions up on board without names. Boys list, Girls list. How do the answers relate to what the students see people doing on tv and in magazine advertisements? What things do people want that are not shown or featured in favorite shows.(idea from MediaEd.org study guides for What Girls Want.) |
Look carefully at media images on MTV. ask guys and gals if they want to look like or act like any of the characters in the music videos. What actions and kinds of life experiences are being shown in the music videos? What kinds of roles are never shown in the music videos? Where do you get pressure in your life to act and be tough? Is it attractive on TV for girls as well as guys to be tough? Look at Susan Sontag and Annie Leibovitz, Women. See Thelma and Louise. See Easy Rider.
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Identity Lesson Sample (using VFD powerpoint or similar images) Construction of Identity power Point |
How do girls express their identity in outfits and color choices? How about boys? Are these realistic or just taught influences? Who pressures Girls to wear Pink and Boys Blue? Can you name some tough girls in kids movies? what do you think of them? Can you name some nice kind boys in movies? What do you think of them?
Think of the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. Describe his personality qualities.. as many as you can. Is he nice or is he mean or both? Do we expect guys to be nice or mean or both? Do we expect girls to be nice or mean or both? Name some mean girls in movies? are any of them heros? Name some mean guys in movies? Are any of them heros? Are mean guys more accepted than mean girls? |
Look at how we build and create our identities using a project like the power point resentation.
Make sample adds linking pleasure to products.. Make them Zany.. fun.. absurd.. try to identify how products are being sold by fun and pleasure in adds you see rather than by any real value in the physical being of the product itself... Particularly look at cigarette adds for this... Make silly cigarette adds that show how absurd smoking is.. List what smoking does to people. Is there anything fun and pleasurable in it or is a bill of goods being sold to young people by adds. Make truth full adds of what you will really get if you smoke. Real VS Illusion in adds and life.. Look at what photoshop and computers can do to make everything look so good... take off pimples etc... Make a personal collage of illusion images vs reality images of what boys and girls and your friends and relative look like.Make a frame of the illusion images and a center of the real images that have meaning in your life. Discuss what is margin and what is center in you students lives.. What is margin and What is center in the culture we live in... Ask students where they want to be and how they think they can get there. |
Use my construction of Identity power point lesson in Art or Social Studies class. Homework idea: Send kids to see movie in seating area of Abercrombie and Fitch store. List what is being sold in store... Write down what is being shown in the abercrombie movie. What are the two sexes doing? Where are the boys looking and where are the girls looking the majority of the time. What are the boys doing? What are the girls doing? Describe the plat, characters and actions of the characters. What is the feeling of the goal of these kids? If you wear the same clothes they are wearing will you feel the same way they are feeling? List the products in the store and their cost. Go to wal mart and list similarly functioning products and what they cost? Discuss all this and its meaning in class. Are the abercrombie movies works or art or just advertising? Can advertising be works of art? Refer to
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Culture and Society Sample ideas
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Lets look at the roles and identities protrayed for different characters in some favorite movies. Disney Lion King, Look at voices and nationalities. Who is shown in a positive and negative light? |
Lets look at Star Wars Characters.. What kind of voices are shown in a neg- ative light and a positive light?
Advertising: discuss the structure and nature of adds. Which ones are interesting and capture your attention? What goes on in them? Is the action fast? Is the action loud? Is the add exciting? Do you feel excited when you see it? Do you want the product because it makes you feel excited to see it or imagine you will feel excited if you possess it like the person who is having a good time on TV ? |
The Beautiful Mind , Look at with the following questions in mind: What was the point of view of the scientist? Why did he stop his medication? What was reality? Is reality a fact or just different perceptions in different people's minds?
We live in an agreed upon reality, with agreed apon rules in our society. What are some of the rules we agree upon, What are some we disagree upon? Define, Point of View, Stance, Interpretation Look at works of art and ask whose point of view are they painted from and whose point of view have we learned in studying what they mean.. |
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The group of people in a place and time. Individuals in society make art. their art reflects their historical time and their society.
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What do works of art tell us about our society?Look at paintings and sculptures of groups or crowds. You could use Seurat, Gettysburg battle at Pa. State Museum in Harrisburg,Burgers of Callais Sculpture by Rodin Look at Seurat's Grande Jatte with young students. Who are the people shown in the picture? What do you think this picture tells you about the time when it was painted?
(idea of looking at Crowds from Dr. Christine Wilson, Cirriculum class, Art Ed student preparation, Penn State) |
Look at photographs from different periods back to beginnings of photography. Have kids describe in groups what they see in the photographs and what it tells about the time they were made. Are the photos a record of reality or a pretend reality made up by the artist? Use Winogrand(Worlds Fair New York,Walker Evans, Louis Hine( breaker boys |
Look at works of William Wegman, How do we look at our society in his works where dogs are substituted for people? What do they become symbols of? Look a photographs of Lee Miller of Buchenwald, Dead Prisoners, Photo of Student Shooting at Kent State and Napalm children in Vietnam.. Discuss social commentary of Documentary photographers? What are they showing us about ourselves and our society? |
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The actions we take, the things, we make, the places we create together form our culture. Jhally says, "culture is the place and space and the stories we tell about ourselves" |
What is your culture like? Do you have more than one culture in your family and life? What are some art objects that reflect people's cultures ? We live in the Western European based North American culture. We also have many subcultures living in this larger culture. Where do you fit in? |
Look at cultures around the world. Have students choose a tradition and artifacts from a culture to share and discuss with class. When is something a cultural artifact or tool and when does it become and art object? Or does one culture call another cultures things art objects when really they are cultural artifacts? What is the difference between art and cultural practices? Look at some performance artists and discuss their work. |
Our way of experiencing culture is though using, making collecting cultural artifacts. Are we the things we have or the user of things? do the things define us or allow us to recognize each other in relationship to each other. List what cultures you belong to and what objects, items, traditions you own and practice from these cultures. |
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People see things differently. This occurs from one culture to another as well as from one individual to another. |
How do you look at something and how does someone else see it differently? Relate to tall or short people. Make a drawing with them from the eye point of view of a bug on the ground. Could view movie Ants or Bugs Life. |
Look at point of view in social groups. Whose opinion or point of view is being taught when you look at art works? Who are the cliques and social groups in school? What are the ways their points of view differ? What tv shows do you watch? Whose point of view are you seeing when you watch a tv show? Ex. discuss nickolodian, cartoon network, PBS. Are shows selling a point of view? |
Look at several contemporary artists and discuss why they have become famous. Who has seen and written about their works? How come we know about them? Look at how the contemporary artists are expressing their points of view. Ann Hamilton, Andy Goldsworthy, Richard Serra, Judy Chicago. Compare and contrast the points of view of these artists or any others you choose off the artists list.
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Each person sees things differently dependig on their cultural background and genetic abilities. See Berger's Ways of Seeing, Ch.1 project in Criticism |
What is in the world and how you see it can be different.. Take a group of picture or paintings of people. sit with group in a circle and ask student to imagine who this person could be in the image. See how many different possibilites they can come up with. Point out how we do not know who people are just by the way they look or where they are at a particular moment. Take magazine advertisement pictures, have kids make imaginary stories or word list poems about the persons in the adds or photos. Collage together photo and the words. Write words simply or provide cut out letters for them to use. Ask students how things can be interpreted in different ways. Things have multiple readings-mean one thing to one person and something else to another. ex. MILK To a baby, all life sustenance and security to an adult, source of calcium and sometimes desirable food. To some, something that stuffs up heads to a dairy farmer, product To a cheese maker- raw material. Disusss other posibilities. |
When speaking of paintings in Ways of Seeing Ch. l, Berger states,tThere historical moment is literally there before our eyes." Take some group paintings from different times in history. Break into groups and discuss who is in the picture and what it is telling you about the people. Can you tell anything about the artist from the painting? Ask each group to make at least two possible interpretations of the picture and present their ideas to the rest of the group. This can tie into history and social studies by discussing the cultural times which the paintings were made in. Make graphic works that show how things can mean one thing to one person and something else to another. Is anyone person's view intrinsically more valid than another... Is there a one better true meaning or interpretation of what we see or do? The opinion of the most Poweful prevails or the largest cultural group. Discuss. |
Look at installation and performance artists. Have students do research on the internet into the artists presented. Use the artist list included here for web connections. Have students break into groups and present to each other what the artists are doing. Have them describe action and meaning. Interpret the works on several levels for each other. There are many modes of interpretation. On a superficial level what is the artist doing? Try to look deeper into what is the meaning of what the artist is doing. What might be different ways the work could be interpreted. Have class design an installation for the school including multiples of some kind with each student creating one of the multiple units.. Discuss different ways the work could be interpreted school community members. Discuss who is in Power to put put their interpretation first. Has art been made to please patrons or artists? Is advertising an artform in this context? |
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Art works take form. They may be solid matter or may take the form of actions or activities in the digital mental space.(cyberspace or hyperspace) see Sydney Walker's Teaching Meaning in Artmaking |
In these projects look at Big Idea first and build projects in materials with conceptual aspect out front. Ex. Recycling project. Make sculpture out of recycled materials |
Make recycling project.. a project that shows concern for the environment in several diffenent ways... Look at the environment through drawing.. Look at it through building something our of recycled materials | Look at objects and forms as Metaphors. Have students collect objects to share. describe what they could be symbols or metaphors for if combined in projects. Make still life with objects and all make drawings combining some of the objects. Discuss what could be some of the possible meanings of the drawings. Combine drawings with photographs of nature to make comentary on the condition of the natural environment. |
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Art historians and Critics describe, evaluate, analyze works of art. |
What is criticism? Why do people value art? Why have art objects been a receptical for meaning for societies and individuals? Why would we want to criticise works? (See the Work and Lectures of Robert Irwin on the value and nature of the art object.) |
What is criticism? Describe the works. Describe meaning and discuss value of meaning. Does value come from the intension of the artist in making of the piece or from the critic recognizing a meaning and instructing the public in that meaning. Whose meaning is more valuable or more truthful; the artist's intent or the critic or public's response? | Discuss arthorship, copying, appropriation, originality. Use Sherri Levine and Duchamp as examples. |
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Artists inquire. They study and look into things. They synthesize or put together their ideas to make works of art. |
What is inquiry? Are we asking good questions? what are you interested in? What are artists doing? Connect art and science here.Look at Corps Machine website |
What is process of inquiry? Look art artists work and identify their big ideas?What are aritists inquiring into? Environment, Social change, formal issues of color, shape and physicla form.Look at art and technology projects from the 60's. |
What would be valuable to inquire about? The power of advertising. Look at environmental and policital actions artists are taking in their works. |
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Artists use media they know and learn new media, and hire people who are expert in media to help them express their ideas. |
Arists use lots of different media; List all the media students have seen used in art works. Present some contemporary artists and what might be media that have not been considered before. |
Does the artwork have to be made by the hands of the artist to be their art? | Artists develop a professional practice unique to their concerns today. Explore what goes into various contemporary artist's professional practice. Discuss authorship, originality and genius. Look at Lynn Hull,Helen and Newton Harrison, James Turrell, Ann Hamilton. |
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Artists use imagination. They combine ideas and forms into something new. They get unique ideas out of their minds both conscious and subconscious. They use techniques to access and encourage their imaginations. |
Imagination can be build on combinations of memory and experience. Ask students to list some special memories. Discuss ways art could be made about memories.. Imagine solutions. Make one. Clay or drawing of something from a memory or a dream. | Make dream and memory journals. Try to look for examples and connections between dreams and memories and occurances in your everyday lives. Make a computer collage in Photoshop combining words from a memeory or dream with at least two images one from the internet and one scanned in. | Immagination comes from our minds' subconscious. When the conscious dialogue stops there is room for the unconscious to let ideas surface. The ideas come from a combination of all the experiences and memories that have come to the person. Collect memories and put them in combination with an action to create performance pieces for each other. (project idea after Garoian, Performance Pedagogy) |
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The time and place inwhich art works were created is significant for understanding the meaning of a work and the role it may have played in its culture. Torys History of Sculpture |
Our artworks have meaning in our lives. Could dolls and toys be considered artworks? Look at the collection of Charles and Ray Eames. Who are your favorite dolls or toys? Do you identify with wanting to be like the dolls or have the dolls things? Do you identify in your mind with the toys you are playing with? Do you become Barbie or Gi Joe? What characters that you want to be are not available as dolls?
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Look at animals dressed in Peoples clothes,,, Cartoons, Wegman, Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit. What can you tell about the time inwhich these artworks were created by the clothes the animals are wearing. Watching Movies... Who are your favorite characters in movies? Do you become these characters in your mind when you are watching the movie. When we watch Indiana Jones are we all ,boys and girls, feeling like we are the Hero? Discuss this... Do we want to be heros with or without bloodshed? Look at yughio cards and how the game is played with no blood shed but winning and loosing by points. |
How does your mind travel into the world of the video game or movie? which reality comes more real, the image you are living in the game or the room you are sitting in Playing the game? If playing a game transports you out of your reality how is it alike or different from an art work transporting you into a new understanding of reality.. I what ways are video game experiences and the experience of an artwork similar and different.? Are video games works of art? In what context to video games and videos become works of art? Discussion intension of the creator. Look at the difference of Ukeles cleaning the public space as a sanitation worker and Bishop Wolf living on the streets as a homeless person as a sabatical experience. What makes one art and one not? Or could both be art although Bishop Wolf did not consider that the intent of her action. |
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Artworks can tell alot about the time inwhich they were made as well as the study of the time can tell us alot about the artworks. |
For over 30,000.00 years human beings have made image representations that today we call art. What might these images been made for if not to be something called an art object? |
What has are been used for historically? To tell history, to record history to lend power to persons represented in images to communicate with gods to insure survival to Communicate Look at examples: Pyramids, Traijans Column,Gothic Cathedrals, Celtic High Crosses, Lascaux cave paintings. What is art being made for today? Look at the changes and discuss why this has occured. |
Leonardo Da Vinci, the first modern man.. Why? Look at his works, the range of his activities and the way he approached solving problems. Look at contemporary artist and how they go about solving problems. |